Friday 13 April 2007

To Kill A Mockingbird - Revisited

A Comment over at Catallarchy. Quoted in full.

Orange County, Ca, about 72 hours ago. A minority-group woman is accused by her ex-spouse of a crime. She has witnesses, photos, even photos posted on the web at the time they were taken, placing her elsewhere. The witnesses were willing to testify too.

But the prosecutor, when made aware of the defence, gets her 9 year old daughter placed temporarily in state care, as being “endangered". She’s told by the prosecutor that she will never see her child again - but if she wants her current spouse to retain custody, she better plead Guilty.

She does, and has been sent to serve her 11 month sentence - in a MALE prison.

Not Fiction, as I said, it happened 72 hours ago. In the USA. We couldn’t stop it, but we are working at gathering the evidence to prove it, and get oversight of the prosecutor, and the very compliant judge who approved everything. You can imagine what happens to a woman put in with the general male prison population. Some of the more hardened sex-workers it’s happened to have survived. This woman runs a web hosting service.

Now a quote:

Ann Coulter - Called one man a faggot.

Don Imus - Called a team “nappy headed hoes.”

Michael Savage - Called a murdered (minority group) woman a psycho freak. “Yeah,…. psychopath. [She] should have been in a back ward in a straitjacket for years, howling on major medication.” “But you know what? You’re never gonna make me respect the freak. I don’t want to respect the freak. The freak ought to be glad that they’re allowed to walk around without begging for something.“
---
From Transadvocates.com.

The Minority Group in question are Transsexuals - not “Transgendered” or “Part-Timers", but those born with HBS, Harry Benjamin’s Syndrome, who have mainly-male brains in mainly-female bodies, or the reverse. I sat “Mainly” because about 30% have some other Intersex condition apart from HBS, such as PAIS or Kleinfelter Syndrome.

The Railroaded woman has been living in a female role, has had enough hormone treatment to give her the usual feminine shape, give off female pheremones etc. But hasn’t had her operation yet - you see, with all the checks and balances, it requires at least a year of living fulltime, and not one but two separate psychiatric assessments before any surgeon will perform the surgery. She doesn’t have the $35,000 anyway, not yet. In fact, she ran out of money for her defence, and had to rely on a public defender.

She has a vengeful ex-spouse though. A prosecutor who is interested in nothing but a conviction. And an… eccentric… Judge, who had no time for such defendants. When it was pointed out that his actions were unconstitutional, he didn’t deny it, but said he was going to do them anyway. People tend to lose the power of rational thought when such an obvious pervert is accused of child molestation - even if they can prove they couldn’t have been near the scene, had such a crime occurred.

How many women reading this think that could survive 72 hours - let alone 11 months - in a male prison? How many think they could survive even 7 hours? But how many mothers would plead guilty, just for the sake of their step daughter? A child who they know they will never be allowed to contact afterwards as a convicted sex offender, even if they survive the ordeal?

It’s too late to save her, what she’s already been through means she will never be the same person again - assuming she’s still alive. But perhaps if we can gather the extraordinary evidence - for such extraordinary claims require such - we may stop it happening again.

That’s being far too optimistic of course, but maybe we can cut down the rate at which it happens.
It's different when it's someone you know, have spoken to on the phone, exchanged e-mails with.

Time to see if we can get anywhere with These Organisations.

My apologies to the many Americans reading this, and especially those who live in Orange County, California. Here am I, a Durned Furriner, interfering blatantly in your country's internal affairs. So Be It. All I can say is, feel free to do the same here in the Australian Capital Territory if you personally witness such an egregious Injustice. I will thank you for it.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Quote - "Here am I, a Durned Furriner,"

Not to worry. Orange County should be a separate state, if not another country apart from the U.S. altogether. It is one of the 'red'est parts of a 'blue' state. Interesting factoid -- 70% of O.C. households are Amway distributors (where are they gonna' find anyone to build their downlines?)

Onto the bigger issue. Living in NORTHERN California is not too bad. But I'm sensing a bush-back from those who believe in an absolute morality -- one in which 'faggots' (they make no distinction between orientation and identity, we're all 'faggots') have 'chosen' to go against THE morality or God's Rule or whatever, and should be made to suffer the consequences of this bad choice. By the way, that is what really drives the 'pro-life' movement, making girls suffer the consequences of out-of-wedlock sex. If it were otherwise, the pro-lifers would support government-sponsored pre- and post-natal care, and some form of subsidy to infants, toddlers and pre-schoolers of single moms, so the kids wouldn't suffer malnutrition and/or 'neglect' from a mom who was struggling just to support basic needs for her child. She should have just kept her legs closed...

This incident with the subject woman is just one incident in an overall effort to marginalize and stigmatize and divide and deny basic dignity and rights to a wide range of people, not just trans, not just GLBT. And it's working. The GL are trying to ditch the T because whereas GL look normal, T's stick out and act as lightning rods for unwanted attention.

What to do? First, who is this person? What is her name? Can someone provide links to stories in the media? Who are her elected representatives? Which jail is she in? Is she in the protective unit, or stuck in with the general population?

Getting spun up is no good. Activism must proceed from a cool head, and solid information.

Karen (trans, pre-op, and subject to the same indignity if I were ever to be jailed.)

Zoe Brain said...

Hi, Karen

I'm at the end of a long communications line, and need to double and triple check the facts before I post them. I don't wish to exaggerate or mis-characterise the situation due to the "chinese whispers" effect and there are privacy issues too.

I have been told more detail, but only from one source, and I require at least two before posting on matters of fact like this.

It is a Federal prison, so the Californian state prison code and guidelines do not apply.

Be careful of San Bernadino county too. There is more to this than I am able to say, I need to verify the details though, my impressions could easily be wrong.

I have posted all I am 100% certain of.